Michael Phelps wins gold to “right the wrong” of USA missing out on a medal

Minutes after winning the first of his 2016 gold medals, Michael Phelps interjected into an interview of his teammates “this [victory] was to right a wrong” referencing a loss in 2012 in which he was robbed of a medal apparently. Not because somebody cheated, or a bad call was made, but because Michael Phelps had willed a win that he didn’t then earn. Being “wronged” by not being given a medal. Doesnt that pretty much illustrate American Exceptionalism?! As if the US sports media was interested in explaining such a thing. Last minute decisions to let Michael Phelps intercede in further relay teams, for the sake of breaking medal hording records, as opposed to physical feats, comes at a price obviously to the other relay swimmers. We’ve heard about the hopes of would-be Olympians dashed by the boycotts of 1980 and 1984. Add the Phelps-first priority of 2016.

The Denver Homeless Problem

The Denver City Council believes that if you criminalize, arrest and jail this man we have solved the homeless problem. If you agree with the City Council go back to your TV and watch the latest episode of “Keeping up with the Kardashians”. But if you truly want to understand, and you want more information, then join activists with OCCUPY DENVER on Fridays. In doing that small act, you will meet the face of the homeless, you will be on the path of becoming a true compassionate human being. The photos below show feeding the homeless feeding at the Tattered Cover Bookstore in LoDo, every Friday at 5:30 pm.

Homeland Security gets in on the act, tells Occupy Denver noise complaint will trigger arrest


DENVER, COLORADO- Fresh on the heels of their courtroom victory, Denver police tell protesters at the weekly Tattered Cover picket: “We’ve received a complaint. Stop using the bullhorn or you will be arrested.” This from the window of a Homeland Security vehicle!

On May 6th a jury upheld Denver’s Disturbing the Peace ordinance, giving officers the right to stop political speech if they had the pretext of an onlooker’s complaint that the noise is “loud and unusual”. In the case of the TATTERED COVER FIVE, the objectionable noise was that of bucket drums. Case law has already established that protest drumming is protected speech, but city attorneys argued that didn’t apply if the intent to make noise had nothing to do with the protest message. Though megaphones were cited as contributors to the noise, the city and its police officers were careful to warn the protesters that only the drums were the offending elements, presumedly because what came across over the megaphones was pretty obviously speech.

Denver Occupiers returned to the Friday protest with little trepidation because we didn’t have our drums. We conducted the 5:30pm homeless feeding, then led chants and distributed fliers as we have every week since January 2014. We were discussing perhaps using drums again, maybe beating them softy this time, when activist at the corner holding down the vocal outreach reported an alarming escalation.

At 7pm the protesters at the corner of Wynkoop and 16th were approached by a police vehicle. From a rolled-down window an officer told they had to stop. “We’ve received a complaint” was the introduction we’ve heard before. “Stop using the bullhorn or you will be arrested.”

Um. No?

It’s the slow creep we anticipated, though probably a swifter kick of the boot than we expected. Give the DPD an inch and they want to hang you with it.

Except this was no mere DPD cruiser. It was a police vehicle marked “Federal Protective Service” from the Department of “Homeland Security”. Purportedly enforcing a noise ordinance.

So what next? The course seems obvious but it means someone willing to risk arrest, someone ready with a camera to record official interactions, and others prepared to backup the videographer and act as legal observers. Should a simple protest aming to interact with the public require such an infrastructure of extra activists? When Occupy Denver undertook to boycott the offending businesses behind the Urban Camping Ban, it seemed commitment enough to feed the homeless, hold signs and print fliers. Now we have to consult attorneys and spring legal traps for the popo.

So who’s up to play bait?

Mother Teresa was the Janet Matzen of Calcutta

(The above photo is of Janet on May Day 20015 feeding a group of 50 people in front of the state capital, still wearing that warm smile for all the homeless and hungry.)
 
Janet Matezen was a 54 year old working mom. She had recently lost her job at a local market where she worked as a meat cutter. Like many of the middle class, Janet was also struggling to make ends meet. It was October 2011, Occupy of Denver made camp in Denver’s Civic Center Park. Their number began to grow daily as word of the movement spread via the media. Janet had never been a protester or even been to a rally such as Occupy, but she was curious. She decided one day that she would drive to the park to see what it was all about.

When I first saw Janet in the park, she looked like any other mother from any city in America. She was average with one difference, she always had a warm smile. She began to talk with the others there in the park, and the more she heard their stories the more shocked she became at the conditions many there were living under. She never spoke of her own problems. Janet’s struggles seemed to fade as she listen to their stories. After all, she had a home and food for her table.

I believe the old adage “I use to feel sorry for myself because I had no shoes, and then I met a man who had no feet” best describes Janet’s experience there with Occupy in Denver’s Civic Center Park.

In the past four years, Janet has transformed herself into an advocate and champion of the homeless and hungry of Denver. Whenever the city council is considering new legislation such as the Anti Camping Ban, Janet is always there to lend her voice in defense of the poor and homeless.

When the Colorado House of Representatives were recently considering a bill of rights for the homeless, Janet was present at every stage of the hearings.

When the homeless are arrested for falling asleep in the park, she is always there to help, even if it’s only to be with them in court.

One spring day in 2012, I interviewed Janet in the city park; one of the questions I ask her was; “Did she have any fears of the people there in the park” her reply surprised me, she said “Oh no! I know they would protect me, it’s the police that I’m afraid of.” I did not miss the irony of her answer; to think that a 54 year old mother in the park would be more afraid of the police than the homeless.

I could only conclude, that Janet, after witnessing so much of the violence by the police against the homeless knew who in truth would serve and protect her.

Janet has also had her small victories, besides feeding the homeless, as reported in the “Popular Resistance”

**STAFF NOTE: Planned protests at Palm Restaurants are cancelled today.**

DENVER, CO. (October 18, 2013) – The Boycott the Urban Camping Ban Coalition is pleased to announce that The Palm Restaurant has officially withdrawn support for Denver’s Urban Camping Ban Ordinance passed in May 2012.

On May 6, 2012, Occupy Denver held their first Boycott in protest of the Urban Camping Ban at Snooze A.M. Eatery.1 It was attended by not just members of Occupy Denver, but activists from Denver and surrounding areas who were concerned about the treatment of their fellow human beings, the homeless. The “Urban Camping” Ban Ordinance was passed by the Denver City Council on May 14, 2012, at which time an ongoing weekly protest lead by Janet Matzen and Occupy Denver began at Snooze A.M. Eatery and later attracted coalition partners. On April 5, 2013, Snooze issued a statement reversing their position in support of the Ban.

On April 26, 2013, the Boycott was moved to The Palm Restaurant Denver and a weekly Friday night boycott began. Despite concerted efforts by the Denver City Council through the Denver Police Department to quash Boycotters’ Constitutional rights to free speech and protest, the protest continued strongly and garnered International support.

Today, we are pleased to announce that The Palm Restaurant, who we truly believe cares for the plight of the homeless, announced they no longer support the “Urban Camping” Ban Ordinance. We thank The Palm Restaurant for standing with the homeless and calling for the repeal of the “Urban Camping” Ban in Denver.
Once again, we urge all businesses and organizations in Denver to review the Denver Homeless Out Loud Report on the implementation and impacts the Ban has had and call for its repeal.

I’ve often been amazed that Janet can be in so many places doing so many different things and all for the benefit of the homeless and poor. Most recently you will find Janet, every Friday in front of the Tattered Cover book store where she continues to protest the anti camping while at the same time feeding the hungry and homeless of Denver.

We often hear the word “Grassroots” but I never saw in action as I’ve seen it with Janet. She gives real meaning to the phrase “Grassroots Activist” with her compassion for others.

Suzanna Arundhati Roy spoke so eloquently when she said: “And so it is, in the quiet breathing of Janet, I see that possible world.”

Is the Israeli Left any lesser invasive? Support Israelis who don’t live in Israel

Happening upon a Middle Eastern restaurant advertising itself to be Israeli-owned, I wondered, as a BDS-adherant promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure the state of Israel to abandon apartheid and illegal occupation, if this business fell under the BDS dragnet. BDS targets Israel and not just products from the Occupied Territories as moderates might prefer. At times BDS also focuses on prominent Zionist enterprises whether they be Israeli or American. Very likely these proprietors evangelize for Israel, but I thought a broader principle suggested itself: LET’S DO SUPPORT ISRAELIS WHO DON’T LIVE IN ISRAEL! Wouldn’t that be precisely the goal?! But a word about other Israelis for whom BDS is asked to make an exception, the oft-celebrated Israeli Left. Are we supposed to be reassured that many Israelis do not support the ethnic cleansing perpetuated by their right wing government? What of the purported majority of Americans who oppose our continued wars and our drone extrajudicial executions? If populations cannot prevent the crimes perpetrated in their name, indeed the responsibility falls to who other but them, does their objection earn any points until they act?

Arrests reach seven at weekly protest of two-faced Denver bookstore

Tattered Cover arrests
DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy Denver’s Tim Calahan and I were arrested and jailed at last Friday’s boycott action against the Tattered Cover Bookstore. This marked Tim’s third citation for drumming, my second, and Janet Matzen’s first. For drumming. Disturbing the peace is what the DPD charges. We maintain the DPD are curbing our free speech. SO NOW I want to tell you the story of how famed civil rights attorney David Lane came to represent us.

The story begins Thursday before the Anonymous “Every5th” march. A couple friends and I were feeling trepidatious about the Anonymous march because the previous month’s Every5th had been abruptly curtailed by riot police. Several Anons were arrested and a number more pepper-sprayed, and so we wondered if we couldn’t get legal advice about how to assert our First Amendment rights without surrendering ourselves to jail. Also on our minds were the past two fridays at the Tattered Cover where citations had been handed out, drums confiscated, and warnings given that if we drummed again, the next arrestees would be jailed. So we went to the celebrated lawyer’s office and tried our luck with the receptionist.

I told her we were activists who were having a rough time with police, we thought they were violating our civil liberties, could David Lane be of any help? She looked at us increduously. We couldn’t just walk in she said, we had to take a card, we had to call in, we could leave a message, they’d call back if they were interested, they might not call back at all, it certainly wouldn’t be right away.

We told her time was rather of the essence, these arrests were as predictable as they were egregious, we didn’t know where to turn and these arrests seemed to present the kind of case in which David Lane specialized. The receptionist repeated her instructions in a tone that reflected she was not sure I wasn’t simply a lunatic.

After making more prolonged and embarassing enteaties, I finally submitted to following her instructions but I insisted too on leaving a written note which gave me further time to expound on our DPD versus the people predicament.

Turning to make our exit, I explained that we would be leaving her office to join a protest at which chances were pretty good we were going to be arrested, but that the next night at the Tattered Cover, we were most definitely going to be arrested. The receptionist made the oddest face as she search my eyes for some sign that I spoke her language. “Wait just a minute please” she told us as she beat a hasty retreat. Within that minute she returned to say “David Lane will meet you in the conference room.”

We spent the next half hour relating the details of our past arrests, how each had been captured on video, in front of witnesses, and how we’d been warned arrests would continue. We offered too that the police were also videotaping assiduously and that their accounts would match ours. David Lane assured us if we were conducting ourselves as we presented and if arrests endured, he would represent us and anyone else who stepped up to the plate. If exercising our freedom of speech became a risk where it was supposed to be right, standing up for us was the least he could do.

That night we hit the streets with a renewed sense of confidence, and the following evening at the Tattered Cover was an empowering experience like no other. As you can see in the photo above, we couldn’t keep our eyes off the half dozen cruisers keeping watch on us. Would they swoop in? When would they descend on us? The anticipation was frustrating. Who should film, who should take whose keys and phone, who did or didn’t want to beat the drum. We were ready for jail, we were ready to tell the officers, as we had the weeks before, that they couldn’t do what they were doing, we knew our rights. This time we could assure our DPD captors that they were asking for trouble in messing with Occupy. Stay tuned!

Did you know that if you disagree with someone’s free speech you can call the cops and say their voices disturb you?


IN DENVER YOU CAN! Denver police have been silencing picketers at the downtown Tattered Cover Bookstore by asserting that complaints give them the authority to curtail the Friday evening protests at will, even before the 10pm noise restriction. The DPD cite “time and place” restrictions to free speech, such as, you know: you can’t shout “fire” in a crowded theater. Apparently they’re worried that crying “Boycott the Tattered Cover” will cause a stampede. We hope so too, and in a PUBLIC SPACE, we have that right.

Occupy Denver: not as badass as they pretend to be

DPD interrupt Occupy Denver protest at the Tattered Cover Bookstore
DENVER, COLORADO- Occupy activists were making their usual cacophony on Friday night when Denver police cruisers began converging into a familiar disproportionate show of force. Experienced skirmishers though Occupiers are, we couldn’t help whispering to each other as we watched more DPD officers accumulate on foot from vehicles yet unseen. The unintended effect of course was that our chanting diminished as the tension rose and Denver onlookers were treated to a literal illustration of the chilling effect of police intimidation. To make matters more embarassing, Occupy was shouting that we would not be silenced! By the time police were trooping upon us there was no sound but DPD boot steps and our “cameras on, everybody, cameras on.”

Our Friday night boycott of the Tattered Cover Bookstore is part of an OD operation to pressure downtown businesses to withdraw their support for the city’s urban camping ban, an ordinance which in effect criminalizes the homeless. The Tattered Cover claims to have asserted neutrality on the city’s decision to forbid sleeping and sheltering in public, but OD stands with Howard Zinn when he claimed “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.” Silence is consent. Injustice prevails when good people say nothing, yada yada. So it’s the Tattered Cover’s turn to step up to what is everyone’s responsibility. OD invited the Tattered Cover to sign a letter rescinding their support for the inhumane ordinance, but the Tattered Cover’s owner held to her obstinence. She was confident that her customers would have sympathy for her business’s precarious balancing act with the community’s unchristian conservatives. If the Tattered Cover wants to put business over doing the right thing, OD concluded that a boycott could provide the commensurate incentive.

A boycott strategy has worked twice before on this campaign. Actually, boycotts and pickets seldom fail. The global have-nots owe everything to street protest. Grown prosperous, middle America has been shorn of this wisdom. Most Americans do not know what protest is about, thus Friday nights in downtown Denver are also a teaching moment for Occupy. Pardon the inconvenience people of Denver, you’re welcome.

To be fair, for the uninitiated, protests are a messy, noisy thing.

As this Friday evening progressed, occupiers suspected the police were going to make an issue of the serenading, it was self-evidently less melodious than the previous weeks. Earlier we noticed officers dispatched in pairs into multiple directions seeking interviewees from among our audience. But we did not expect a DPD delegation to descend upon us at troop strengh. We began shouting down the DPD as their commander shouted “Can everybody hear me?” What authority had officers to interrupt our constitutional right to assemble? It is amply documented that when activists attempt to interrupt the meetings of others, with Occupy’s “mic check” for example, we are escorted from the room with rough haste.

In Occupy’s defense Friday night, we didn’t submit ourselves to being lectured about “what you are free to do etc, etc.” We knew our rights. We also suspected a noise complaint before the hour of 10pm was of dubious legitimacy. We did however accept an abridgement of our free speech, for the sake of, let’s call it, detente. Because it was dark and we were outnumbered.

A few Occupiers were not happy about being made to relinquish megaphones and drums on the trumped-up premise of signed noise complaints. The officers had obviously solicited the complaints; they had not been dispatched in response to any. Some Occupy wild cannons threatened to upset our disarmament truce. Our hushed reproaches become the next inadvertent impediment to regaining a chant momentum.

In debriefing it was agreed that the more impertinent among us are precious resources Occupy should not make a habit of quashing. When demonstrator numbers are enough to effect unarrests, we’ll have occasion to reject civil liberty infringing ultimatums and encourage the pushing of limits beyond the habitual collective consensus comfort level. This security culture indiscretion about protest strategy is tendered here as an encoded call to action.

BUT SERIOUSLY, what do you make of the Denver Police Department’s exagerated show of numbers at the Friday night action? It was the usual DPD MO in the heydays of Occupy, and it’s what they are throwing now at the Anonymous “Every 5th” resurgence, but what about OD’s campaign -to repeal the Urban Camping Ban- could have provoked a law enforcement surge aimed at its decisive truncation?

WHO KNEW a picket of such limited scope could draw such ire. We aren’t threatening Capitalism or banks or energy infrastructure, or DPD’s favorite, FTP.

However hypocritical and exceptionalist the Tattered Cover is behaving, I don’t believe they requested DPD’s move. But I don’t doubt the Downtown Business Partnership is fearful that the famed independent bookstore might cave to protester demands at which point the DBP’s mandate will lose its liberal cover. They know the inevitability of boycott victories, they’re business people.

The Tattered Cover doubles down on its privilege to ignore Denver homeless

Tattered CoverDENVER, COLORADO- Representatives of Occupy Denver met with both owner and manager of The Tattered Cover Bookstore last week hoping to avert taking public action against the popularly lionized bookseller for its passive support of the city’s Urban Camping Ban. There was hope that owner Joyce Meskis could reconsider her “neutrality” on the policy of oppression which has proved disastrous for Denver’s beleaguered street dwellers, at the very least, rescind her membership in the Downtown Business Partnership, the lobbying entity which conjured the ordinance.

INSTEAD Meskis told the Occupiers to redirect their efforts toward citizens instead of pressuring businesses to take sides. Meskis admitted she had not followed the city council hearings and so did not know that individuals have had no more clout there than have the homeless. The camping ban was proposed by a cabal of businesses, OD explained. Its repeal will no doubt require an outcry from the same. Meskis remained adamant that her business take no side. OD suggested that a bookstore of all places might want to hold itself to the higher ideals it propagates. What good is literacy if it does not elevate? Meskis held firm: the Tattered Cover must entertain both sides and allow customers to arrive at their own conclusions.

Imagine a dealer of books so pedantic. Really, are there two sides to human rights? Archbishop Desmond Tutu once wrote that neutrality helps the oppressor, never the oppressed. They haven’t read him, or maybe they disagree? More obnoxious than ignorance is arrogant ignorance. Even the illiterate do not argue against Edmond Burke’s “when good men do nothing.” What’s the point of enriching yourself with a business if it’s not to have more impact on your community?

Looking at the callous indifference of business leaders, who reserve their personal sympathies in the interest of dispassionate objectivity, you might as well be staring at an American general, a politician, or other such sociopath, the embodiment of Capitalism, void of humanity.

Fortunately people governed strictly by the bottom line are much easier to reorient than others whose values are ideological or moral. Attenuating their flow of customers brings businesses to heel. Money talks, and yes, it’s too bad the Tattered Cover has turned out to be the unlikely posterchild.

BUMMER? HARDLY. What we have is a opportunity to blow open the conservative liberal pretense that privileged first worlders need not soil themselves with taking sides. Wars happen, torture happens, neglect of the poor happens when community members, particularly the power centers of business, say nothing to oppose them. The Tattered Cover maintains its ambivalence is a principled stand. I think its acquiescence on the urban camping ban allowed the more preditory downtown businesses to rationalize their inhumanity, thinking “see, it’s not just us assholes.”

OD’s reluctant boycott continues undaunted this Friday at 5:30pm at the Tattered Cover’s LoDo store.

Tattered Cover boycott

Occupy Denver hits the Terrible Twos!

LOOK OUT DENVER! There was no birthday cake this year for Occupy Denver, though the second annual #S17 OWS anniversary celebration did not go unmarked. Subgroup offshoots of Denver’s notorietous Occupy deployed themselves with the usual rowdy spirit. Denver Homeless Out Loud, advocates for the homeless where traditional “advocate” kapos leave off, defied the city’s no-sleep no-shelter ordinance by setting up tents on the eve of S17. Police kept the activists awake all night and forbid them to enter the tents, but the encampment hung on until morning for a scheduled solidarity action. At noon Colorado Foreclosure Resistance picketed the offices of Castle Law Group, responsible for 90% of the state’s foreclosures. Occupiers moved on to protest the Westin’s Palm Restaurant (Boycott the Palm) for its stand on criminalizing Denver’s poor. Other Occupiers couldn’t join in because they were in Boulder organizing Occupy Flood Relief. Armed with megaphones, drums, the capability to mobilize at often a moment’s notice, and an attenuation level pegged at disruptive, Occupy Denver acts every bit its age, prepare for it Denver, a year of the terrible twos. Happy Birthday Occupy!

First Colorado BDS Conference held in Denver to end occupation of Palestine


DENVER, COLORADO- The first Colorado BDS Conference on April 13 held on the Auraria campus in support of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel to restore rights to Palestinians, end Israeli Apartheid, and end the occupation of Palestine.

Target of Occupy Denver boycott expects DPD to roll protesters like they’re homeless sleepers

Snooze Jon Schlegel
DENVER, COLORADO- Downtown eatery co-owner Jon Schlegel thought the homeless were defenseless when he led an effort to criminalize sleeping or seeking shelter out-of-doors last year. Instead Schlegel incurred the wrath of Occupy Denver, who’ve maintained a now seven-month long Boycott Snooze protest opposite his trendy restaurant. Yes it’s personal, Schlegel opened SNOOZE in a depressed area adjacent to a homeless shelter, now he wants to gentrify his digs by running out the homeless. So every Sunday occupiers bring signs to sway potential customers from supporting Snooze’s war on the homeless, and every Sunday Schlegel calls the police. But there have been no charges, officers remind Occupiers they are within their rights, yet Snoozegoers are treated to the illusion that the boycott’s legality may be borderline. You know, it’s that phony paradox promoted by our corporate media, that free speech means having to tolerate another’s opinion however offensive. (When free speech offends you, you are likely the offender being protested.) The real question is how Denver Police justify juxtaposing their intimidating armed presence against a citizen’s First Amendment rights.

Snooze owner Jon Schlegel wants Denver Police to treat Occupy protesters like they’re homeless

Snooze Jon Schlegel
(As best we could determine, Facebook was refusing to aggregate this article so long as “Snooze” and “Jon Schlegel” were mentioned in the headline. The article you are looking for is above at this link. Target of Occupy Denver boycott expects DPD to roll protesters like they’re homeless sleepers. Facebook still won’t allow the photo.)

How much does Occupy not believe in elections? Enough to boycott them?

US Election is election fraudPundits, even friendlies, are infecting the Occupy Movement with direction-waylaying cynicism, so I’ll tell you what I think Occupy should do next. Never mind the usual grievances, leave those to existing advocacy groups, although they do benefit from Occu-proding obviously. No matter what you think Occupy Wall Street’s core issue was, by definition OWS asserted our system of governance was broken, our regime is not responsive, not representative, and immovable by the conventional permitted mechanisms. So right now, which bankrupt democratic mechanism is being paraded before us, taunting a debunking from Occupy? We’ve been paying it lip service already: the fraud of our electoral process. Isn’t it time Occupy said DON’T VOTE? Don’t dignify Election 2012 with your buy-in, undignify it with a vote of no confidence. I don’t mean merely not vote, let’s Get Out The No Vote! Now wouldn’t that separate the men from the Dems!

MoveOn and the 99% Foundation et al, have been co-opting OWS numbers already, herding Occupy’s newly activated citizenry back into the Obama fold. Apparently there’s still hope to be squeezed, that Barack Obama isn’t the people’s nemesis he pretends to be in office.

If we threaten to occupy Obama’s vote, the Dems will roar! They’ll accuse us of ensuring the GOP villain’s win. They’ll be positively shrill, can you imagine? Occupy will go from a nostalgically eulogized Prague Spring, to People’s Enemy Number One, a national threat, inestimably unpatriotic, and suddenly more relevant than anyone’s ever dared admit. Our unoccupied friends will go from politely avoiding talking politics around us to actively begging us to reconsider.

Anyway, how are we going to explain our demonstrations at the RNC and DNC? We protest because the people are given no real choices. We protest because elections are a sham. Do we believe it ourselves? Think of fellow occupiers who’d earlier agreed that elections are mere show. Was all that talk polite patronizing? The inefficacy of voting is in fact a huge contention, and not one of those partisan niceties upon which we can agree to disagree. The illusion of Democracy is WHY WE OCCUPY. Our government is broken, the entire electoral system is election fraud. The presidential race is just a bold Kabuki show-stopper to please the crowd. Maybe Occupy can make it a real show stopper.

Tent monster who occupied Walmart


OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- The occupation continued this weekend at the Walmart on Powers & Palmer Park. We took special care not to make shoppers feel guilty, who’d already turned in, or coming out of the store, hurriedly checking items off their to-do lists. Instead we directed our BOYCOTT WALMART banners at the rush of consumers driving by, many of whom gave us honks of support.

PICS: Occupy Walmart 12/12 First of our Twelve Walmart Days of Christmas

OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Occupy CSprings occupied the Walmart on 8TH STREET for our first of 12 Walmart Days of Christmas. Slogans you can use for your own superstore boycott: WALMART: ROLLING BACK UNION GAINS, ALWAYSWALMART KILLS MOM & POPSSHOP LOCAL, NOT WALMART and HEALTHCARE FOR CHRISTMAS. Up next: POWERS BLVD!

More posters: WALMART SUCKS THE LIFE OUT OF OUR TOWNWALMART: BAD JOBS, BAD KARMAWALMART: LOW WAGES, NO HEALTH CAREDON’T SUPPORT SLAVE LABORBOYCOTT WALMART: COMPANY STORE OF THE GLOBAL PLANTATION.


Photos by Roger, Robin, Loring and OCS.

On #D12 #OccupyCS takes on Walmart, company store of the global plantation.

Occupy Colorado Springs in Acacia Park, Sunday December 11, 2011
OCCUPIED COLORADO SPRINGS- Showing the flag today on the Occupy corner of Acacia Park in advance of tomorrow’s 12/12 WALMART BOYCOTT. You might well ask why we passed on a sunny, pre-Chrismas shopping weekend to picket the 8th Street Walmart on a MONDAY. Easy. Our boycott is timed with other OCCUPY actions on #D12, the shutdown of Oakland’s port by #OccupyOakland and #OccupyDenver’s blocking of the Loveland Colorado Walmart distribution center. Solidarity. So we thought we’d dry our new signs today and recruit for tomorrow’s event. The cops came early.


In the interest of FULL DISCLOSURE, here’s the entirety of what was happening on the corner today. Something Native American, related to Hispanic American culture, involving to a troubling degree a number of Catholic clergy, having to do with what, the first occupation? The motorcycle cops were there to escort their procession along Tejon.

If you don’t see Merry Christmas in the window, no, you don’t go in that store! The Star of David used to do that trick.

This season’s War-On-Christmas email is pushing a holiday ditty whose refrain goes “If you don’t see Merry Christmas in the window, then you don’t go in that store.” Seems like it might be easier to mark those stores with a Star of David on the window, or would that be too obviously Nazi?
On the other hand, it is refreshing to see even Dumbfox recognize the imperative of targeting commerce to make your point heard. So, boycotts do work?

You can see the Christmas-lovers’ point of course. They’d prefer that merchants exploiting the Christmas purchasing season at least be paying lip service to Christmas and not the ever-looming Godless “Holiday” eclipse, supposed.

This song reminds us “it’s all about the little baby Jesus” and goes on to list all the things Christmas wouldn’t be without him. Of course, half the list traces back to pagan tradition, but what to Christian Holiday-goers know of that?

And the latter half goes back as far as they remember, as their grandmother and her grandmother before might remember, but no more. The commercial Christmas charts its provenance to the industrial revolution, the birth of consumer goods and marketing. Santa Claus as we recognize him stepped right off Coca-cola calendars of the last mid-century.

Christmas was the religious Trojan Horse to pitch the shopping holiday to reluctant hedonists. Now the same parishioners who don’t have an needle’s-eye chance to get to Heaven, feel like the can pay their tithes in Christmas presents.

Yes, I do think it’s funny that people who abhor the prospect of disruptive economic boycotts are willing to consider it at the drop of Santa’s cap. Unless of course they’re satisfied that making this video viral is a shot across the bow enough. I doubt their Christmas Spirit has any room for Lenten restraint.

Oddly enough, one of their potential boycott targets, and mine, has hung banners in its outlets to announce they will be open for Christmas, introducing a delectable dilemma. Starbucks says Merry Christmas in the window, so it’s exempt from this singing email picket, yet it disrespects Christmas by working through it. What do you do?

I answer that one unequivocally. Yes, boycott Starbucks. They fund Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories. That may be somewhat directly related to their celebrating Hanukkah not Christmas, but that’s NO KIND OF REASON to boycott a business. If you want to boycott a store because it’s not Christian, take it up with the Anti-Defamation League. Leave bigotry to the Zionists.

Want a depressing laugh? See what’s passing for direct action strategy

It begins: “Nonviolence is a great power which, when used correctly, can overturn empires.” You see the hole they’ve dug for themselves… For your reading enjoyment, here’s the entire of the Metta Center’s nonviolence page, unedited, gross assumptions, emphasized.

“Overturn empires” –WHICH? Can you name EVEN ONE? Apparently nonviolence has yet to be “used correctly.”

“that power” –Sorry, unproved.

“it’s our only option” –You wish, I guess. You and the forces of oppression.

“the most effective approach” –So you see the problem here. Every conclusion flows from a false assumption.

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Nonviolence is a great power which, when used correctly, can overturn empires. You will be drawing on that power, the full extent of which comes into our hands when we adopt it deeply and consistently, not because it’s our only option but because it’s the option that allows us to preserve our humanity in the process of struggle, i.e. to not further create the problem we’re trying to solve. Just ends and nonviolent means are a powerful combination, and that becomes clearer the longer the struggle goes on. We also get closer to the full potential of nonviolence when we have trained ourselves to the point where nonviolence is practically a way of life, offering unyielding resistance to injustice but never hostility to the true well-being of any person. Nonviolence is strategically the most effective approach in any situation of oppression particularly; however, its full power comes out when we:

have set a determination to identify core issues for which we are willing to make great sacrifices (and compromises on everything else);

have a well developed program of self-improvement and constructive work, building the world we want without demanding that others give it to us;

have a strategic plan that can carry us forward for the long term, using constructive program whenever possible and active resistance when necessary.

—————————–

“great sacrifices” –Martyrdom, victimhood. “compromise” –Punked.

“self improvement and constructive work” –Blame the victim. Onus for change is apparently the responsibility of the oppressed.

I’m sick already. What follows is nothing better than bad religious dogma, based not on morals but psychological engineering. It’s textbook Dale Carnegie, How to Make Friends And Influence People. As if corporations were people.

You can almost smell the crap. What you have here are missionary opportunists seizing upon strife to convert the oppressed to their pie-in-sky-when-you-die spirituality. No different than trying to convert indigenous peoples instead of educating them. Or making drunkards sing church hymns before they get soup.

————————–

Points for Consideration:

I. Nonviolent Strategy Curve

Explanation:
Nonviolent strategies help to create a state of positive peace, restored relations and a higher image of the human being. There are times when conflict is necessary for this process. A nonviolent person will never shun conflict but will always use an opportunity to deepen his or her practice and connection with others.

This curve demonstrates how to create positive peace by advancing nonviolent strategies when relationships deteriorate and dehumanization increases.

II. Anger Under Discipline

Nonviolence is not passivity; it is a power in and of itself. There are three faces of power, according to Kenneth Boulding: threat power, exchange power and integrative power. Threat power is the power of a military force; exchange power is the power of money. Unlike military/threat or economic power, nonviolence is integrative power or love in action. In order to use its power on any scale–small or large–we must as Dr. King said, “harness anger under discipline for maximum effect.”

Anger, like other emotions, is a powerful force. But it does not need to be expressed in destructive or short-sighted action. Anger can be transformed into the fuel for nonviolent, constructive action with a long-term positive effect. What are some ways to “harness anger under discipline?”

1. Respect yourself and respect the goals of the movement by using the means that will achieve the end for the benefit of everybody (aka nonviolently).

2. Never humiliate another human being; all who watch and participate are potential allies, including perceived opponents.

3. Make your movement irresistible, not alienating, through education, professionalism, dialogue, restorative practices and nonviolence trainings.

4. Be willing to take on suffering and insult if necessary rather than inflict it onto others, at whatever the cost to yourself.

5. Be able to articulate clearly and effectively the goals of the movement and see the media as a way to persuade others to join your efforts. This takes reflection and serious strategic planning. Keep the message focused, clear and easy to understand.

6. Take time each day to take care of yourself spiritually. You need to be at your best when emotions and anger are running high. Take time to meditate and enjoy that you are working for a higher purpose.

III. Three Components Needed

Nonviolent struggle has three primary dimensions:

Constructive Programme: This means building the world you want without waiting for others to give it to you, e.g. alternative institutions, local economies, nonviolent leadership models.

Obstructive Program: This is what Dr. King called “non-cooperation with evil.” This includes tactics such as reverse and general strikes, marches, sit-ins, boycotts, etc.

Strategic Overview: In order to have the maximum effect, a movement needs to know when to switch between CP and OP, when to walk away from the police or when to allow for confrontation, etc.. Strategy can be strengthened by an overall commitment to nonviolence, a coherent message to share with those involved and those watching, and disciplined action.

IV. Learning

Take the time to watch other movements. Do not merely imitate but learn from them: understand what worked and why it worked. For instance, if protesters on Wall Street provoked a police struggle, how effective was it for an overall nonviolent goal and how might a different strategy work better?

Constantly assess and re-assess the situation in light of new information and new situations.

Stay in contact with other movements. Share the lessons with one another.

V. Tips for a Long-term strategy:

Sometimes in nonviolence we don’t get what we immediately set out to change, but in the long-term, the situation is more pliable, flexible and change comes more easily. Do not see short term failures as a failure of the method of nonviolence, and do not let anyone convince you that violence would be a better strategy to take. It isn’t. If one needs greater strength, one can “purify” one’s efforts. A simple way is to increase one’s commitment to nonviolence in thought and word. At this point, other practices such as meditation will be tools.

Statistics show that even if violence “works” in the short run, in the long term, it never makes a situation better. As Gandhi said, “violent revolution will bring about violent self-rule.”

The more comprehensive our nonviolence, the greater effect it can have. This means that instead of focusing all of our efforts on outward change, we can learn to deepen our awareness of how nonviolence works, not only on the level of the deed, but in our words and thoughts.

Nonviolence is a form of persuasion and dialogue, not a one-sided form of coercion. Respect the escalation curve model and always try to deescalate a conflict; avoid using the wrong strategy at the wrong time (this is where a strategic overview is essential).

Satyagraha is a last resort strategy for a discussion (looking for a win-win outcome) and can lead to the need for self sacrifice at the highest degree possible. Do not make this sacrifice before it is necessary e.g. promises of fasting unto death without first a willingness to try other strategies are always ineffective. Satyagraha is a method which “compels reason to be free.” We must be reasonable ourselves to awaken the reason of another; we must be willing to take risks and sacrifices (even to our ego) to open the heart of another.

(At Metta, we would like to change the slogan to “Create a New World! Stop the Machine! because in creating a new world, the machine dissolves more readily.)

That’s right, METTA CENTER can’t help themselves from second guessing the OCTOBER2011 slogan. It’s like antiwar detractors insisting message be FOR something instead of ANTI war. You can be AGAINST injustice, inequity, crime, greed, et al, without having to be on the hook for condescending an alternative.

Knesset makes BDS movement illegal, says boycotts, divestment & sanctions threaten Apartheid right to exist

BDS movement - Boycott Divestment and SanctionsFollowing their no hamfisted holds barred blocking of the Gaza aid flotilla, Israel yesterday declared illegal the rising domestic support for the BDS movement. The free speech ban extends even to non-Israelis in the occupied territories. Suggesting it’s not going to be BDS activistists who ultimately delegitimize Israel.

Should local Israel boycott arrestees face wrongful charges alone, without your support or media scrutiny?

COLORADO SPRINGS- There’s a plan tomorrow, Thursday Jan 6 at 1:30, for the first court appearance of BDS activists Cyndy Kulp and Ted Nace, arrested in November at a local shopping center, and charged with trespass to curtail their free speech. THE PLAN is for the two Middle East Peace Project activists to follow legal procedures unobtrusively, no press, no statements, no calling attention to the Israeli war crime they were protesting, or now the patently unconstitutional abridgment of their civil liberties. Self-censorship does seem odd when the original goal was to raise public outcry about injustice in Palestine. Isn’t media scrutiny otherwise the only opportunity which knocks when you’re gagged by wrongful arrest? Not much of a plan. Are veteran BDS campaigners Coloradans For Peace going to disrupt tomorrow’s agenda to sweep BDS/Free-Speech under the rug? HELL YES.

A strategy of keeping your head low, of tempering your message to avoid offense, of your sponsors and allies disassociating themselves from you, is a plan for mice not men.

While it might feel unseemly to call attention to yourself, even as a victim of injustice, that’s the same inhibition that keeps so-called advocates for social reform from protesting in public in the first place. Standing on the sidewalk, holding a sign is about trying to draw attention.

Long time peace activists Kulp and Nace need not check their outspoken humanitarian compulsions at the door tomorrow. Please turn up at 1PM tomorrow outside the Municipal Courthouse to show your support and help the two raise their voices to further the message about which they feel so passionately.

COLORADANS FOR PEACE is scheduling a press conference tomorrow at 1PM to object to the city’s recently unveiled policy of enforcing severe limitations on rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. In the past this harassment has been aimed at antiwar protest, now it is being used to silence critics of Israeli Apartheid and the illegal subjugation of the Palestinian people. If either of these issues is important to you, please come lend your voice.

Below is the policy which the City of Colorado Springs is seeking to enforce:

COLORADO SPRINGS POLICE DEPARTMENT BULLETIN

ORIGINATED BY: COMMANDER BRIAN GRADY
APPROVED BY: DC PETER CAREY
DATE ISSUED: 05-17-10
GENERAL TOPIC: FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS
SERIAL NO: 013-10(P)

The legal counsel for some large business owners has contacted the City Attorney’s Office to request that the Police Department enforce trespassing laws against individuals circulating petitions or otherwise expressing free speech views on their private property. Senior Attorney Will Bain has communicated with the attorneys and has done legal research to determine the current law regarding free speech on private property. Senior Attorney Bain advised that the private rights of the business owner outweigh the free speech rights of the individual.

Additionally, the research by the City Attorney’s Office indicates that at this time the Citadel Mall, Chapel Hills Mall, the First and Main Shopping Center, the World Arena, and University Village can be interpreted to be public areas due to their size, number of stores, and past court rulings. While the malls and shopping center can still impose time, place, and manner restrictions, the charge of trespass will not be appropriate for these five locations in Colorado Springs when addressing free speech rights. BOLOs have been placed on these addresses as a reminder.

All sergeants and officers shall review the additional changes and detailed procedures to be followed in these type cases, which are outlines in General Order 701, dated 01/13/10.

Here is the Coloradans For Peace press release:

Coloradans For Peace and its social justice allies unequivocally reject the City of Colorado Springs assertion to limit free speech rights on public or private property. We reject the conclusion alleged by the City Attorney that current law allows for initiating trespassing charges to curtail individuals “expressing free speech views.”

Whether against antiwar protesters, or activists boycotting Israeli goods stolen from occupied people in violation of international law, we feel that municipal policies should seek to defend, not inhibit, the First Amendment rights of its residents and citizens.

CFP objects to the attempt to set precedent whereby private property landowners operating facilities open to the public can dictate what civil liberties they will allow or disallow. And we certainly oppose law enforcement behavior which takes it upon itself to enforce trespassing charges without being summoned by the traditional complaints to warrant legitimate intervention by police officers.

PPJPC drops justice & peace in favor of Judas kiss & Participatory militarism

You don’t care what our neighborhood Pikes Peak Justice & Peace Commission has gotten its leash tangled around –I shouldn’t– but the latest is just too funny. FIRST, in November they sponsored an Israel-BDS protest to boycott a local Ahava outlet and promptly got two participants arrested. Wrongly of course, but the police were awaiting them with a letter fashioned for the occasion by the City Attorney giving the CSPD authority to drive the activists from the private property. Although planning had been kept on the QT, do you think the reception might have been due to monthly confabs which the PPJPC executive director keeps with city law enforcement? Later in debriefing, the director pronounced his incredulity that the “new policy” hadn’t been spelled out to him at the last meeting. So what kinds of things do the PPJPC & CSPD discuss? SECOND, just as the PPJPC fell for the Save Darfur intervention-as-peacemaking faketivism, then zipped it for Obama’s false hopetivism, now the pitiful dupes call their Muslim-Jewish-Christian “Evening in Jerusalem” gathering a THREE CUPS OF TEA PARTY! Would this be in deference to Greg Mortenson‘s Western Empire [school] building enterprise? That puts the PPJPC in the company of the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, Mortenson’s biggest boosters. The next chance I get I will ask known J&P’ers I promise you — who are the Idiot Iscariots taking this tack? The PPJPC is soliciting donations from earnest yous and mes in the name of peace and justice, to advocate for forfeiting civil liberties and 3CoT’s participatory militarism.

On the AHAVA arrests, do we know who tipped off the cops? Not really, but we know the city’s actions didn’t spring from the media press releases which went out the day before. How much lead time do you figure is required to solicit a written policy from the city attorney’s office? Who had that kind of foresight?

The official word was that the “new policy” delineating which shopping centers might be major enough to be considered public spaces, and which were only average-sized neighborhood no-free-speech zones, was drafted to preempt populist petitioner Doug Bruce from assailing shoppers at will. But he prevailed against the trespassing charges pressed against him by Costco didn’t he. So that pretext doesn’t wash, and by no stretch of the law would a Costco parking lot be considered public.

There is already legal precedence for shopping centers not being considered the new town squares, and the state of Colorado has already put freedom-seekers aspiring to assemble in malls that they must abide by individual mall rules of conduct. At Chapel Hills mall is means, by permit, one at a time, no more than one day per quarter, no handouts, and a moratorium on all social causes over the holiday shopping period.

So a city-wide policy penned by their counsel giving explicit authority for police to remove activists from private property would seem redundant and by its intentional breadth, unconstitutional. But it gives cops-on-the-beat ground not to vacillate.

However CSPD learned about the J&P plans, wouldn’t it seem a crippling limitation to be meeting with the police on a regular basis to give them a heads up about any events that might concern them?

Keep in mind, the PPJPC executive director is avowedly protest-averse. He’s stated he doesn’t see the value to public demonstrations, and they certainly disrupt his ongoing strategy to ingratiate himself and his non-profit into the fabric of local conformist NGOs.

In the case of the Ahava boycott, though the protest was organized by a subcommittee of the PPJPC, toward the press the activists were told to identify themselves only as Middle East Peace Project. That was the PPJPC wouldn’t be tainted by any negativity which the action might draw. You’d think that choosing to distance yourself from motivated peace activists would be justification enough to pretend not knowing of their plans when the police are chatting you up for clues.

What good does it serve organizers if a parent organization is going to maintain plausible deniability but at the same time is helping law enforcement keep tabs on your plans.

There was nothing illegal about the plan to picket the Ahava store. There was nothing illegal about assembling on a shopping center parking lot which is open to the public. There is no need to alert the local police if the only result is that they will finagle a ruling by which you are prevented from exercising your constitutional guaranteed rights.

Need another reason to boycott 900 lb bully Amazon? Censoring Wikileaks

Amazon booted Wikileaks from its cloud server service, at the behest of Zionist warmonger Joe Lieberman. Twittered Wikileaks in response:
“If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books.” The corporate media is already censoring “Cablegate” with misdirection, describing the leaked diplomatic cables as indelicate embarrassments, as opposed to incriminating revelations of America’s imperialist anti-democratic outrages. The Interpol has declared an international manhunt of the Wikileaks founder based on scurrilous accusations of sexual misconduct, Canada is calling for Julian Assange’s execution via US drone, our politicians want to prosecute the Australian Assange under the draconian 1917 US Espionage Act. Amazon’s cowardly deed today is a reminder of the private sector’s omniscient control over everyone’s access to information. Imagine a world where whistleblowers are denied whistles. Shopping bags only please. On Amazon’s internet no one can hear you scream.

While the US media is scolding Wikileaks spokespeople for shaming US diplomacy, the free presses are reporting about the cables which detail the US abuse of diplomatic cover to supply intelligence data, some of it intended to direct US/Israeli drone strikes. The collusion of foreign governments to help the US circumvent international law, US complicity in the Honduran coup, among many other crimes.

Bradley Manning allegedly confessed leaking Cablegate to FBI informer Adrian Lamo, describing the trove of damning revelations thus:

“Hilary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in a searchable format to the public. Everywhere there is a U.S. post there is a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. It is open diplomacy, worldwide anarchy in CSV format. It’s Climategate with a global scope and breathtaking depth. It is beautiful and horrifying.”

Although an estimated half million US government operatives had access to these cables, only 20-year-old intelligence analyst Manning had the conscience to recognize the immorality being kept from public view. That’s a military culture of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, of which discrimination against sexual preference is the smallest consequence.

Have you read any of the objective coverage of the damning cables? What’s been released is only a fraction, so as not to overwhelm a media which can only focus on a single soundbite at a time. Is the absence of cables critical of Israel evidence that Julian Assange is actually MOSSAD? Rather, and I’m not alone in pointing this out, the dearth of diplomatic cables to and from Israel indicates the streamlined collusion with the US. Only in Tarantino movies do hired killers have dialog. Old comrades don’t regale each other with revelations about Quarter Pounder versus Le Royale. Israeli and US diplomats have nothing to have to keep abreast about.

Is Assange really CIA/MOSSAD/AIPAC? I’d say the smears against him more likely are. When the same voices disparaging Assange ALSO find themselves horrified by the revelations of the US diplomatic cables, is when I’ll start giving them some credibility. Nobody’s so cynical that they cannot be shocked about US indifference to its inhumanty. Noam Chomsky calls it the US’ hate of Democracy.

Are FBI raids on activists focused on UNAC strategies?

The UNAC is claiming that recent FBI raids on the offices of various antiwar organizations are linked to those which attended its July conference, an attempt to coordinate national antiwar activities.

Even the title of the conference was never pinned down. Here are the 28 action points decided for the upcoming year, which reads like a clearinghouse of ideas.

Action Program Adopted by the National Conference to Bring the Troops Home Now!

Albany, New York, July 25, 2010

1.
The Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the United Auto Workers (UAW) have invited peace organizations to endorse and participate in a campaign for Jobs, Justice, and Peace. We endorse this campaign and plan to be a part of it. On August 28, 2010, in Detroit, we will march on the anniversary of that day in 1963 when Walter Reuther, president of the UAW, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights leaders joined with hundreds of thousands of Americans for the March on Washington. In Detroit, prior to the March on Washington, 125,000 marchers participated in the Freedom Walk led by Dr. King. At the march, King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech for the first time before sharing it with the world in Washington. This year, a massive march has been called for October 2 in Washington. We will begin to build momentum again in Detroit on August 28th. We also endorse the August 28, 2010 Reclaim the Dream Rally and March called by Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Action Network to begin at 11 a.m. at Dunbar High School, 1301 New Jersey Avenue Northwest, Washington D.C. .

2.
Endorse, promote and mobilize for the Saturday, October 2nd “One Nation” march on Washington, DC initiated by 1199SEIU and the NAACP, now being promoted by a growing coalition, which includes the AFL-CIO and U.S. Labor Against the War, and civil rights, peace and other social justice forces in support of the demand for jobs, redirection of national resources from militarism and war to meeting human needs, fully funding vital social programs, and addressing the fiscal crisis of state and local governments. Organize and build an antiwar contingent to participate in the march. Launch a full-scale campaign to get endorsements for the October 2 march on Washington commencing with the final plenary session of this conference.

3.
Endorse the call issued by a range of student groups for Thursday, October 7, as a national day of action to defend education from the horrendous budget cuts that are laying off teachers, closing schools, raising tuition and limiting access to education, especially for working and low income people. Demand “Money for Education, not U.S. Occupations” and otherwise link the cuts in spending for education to the astronomical costs of U.S. wars and occupations.

4.
Devote October 7-16 to organizing local and regional protests to commemorate the ninth anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan through demonstrations, marches, rallies, vigils, teach-ins, cultural events and other actions to demand an immediate end to the wars and occupations in both Iraq and Afghanistan and complete withdrawal of all military forces and private security contractors and other mercenaries. The nature and scheduling of these events will reflect the needs of local sponsors and should be designed to attract broad co-sponsorship and diverse participation of antiwar forces with other social justice organizations and progressive constituencies.

5.
The U.S. military is the largest polluter in the world. Therefore, we endorse the “climate chaos” demonstration in Washington D.C. on October 11, coordinated by the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance.

6.
Support and build Remember Fallujah Week November 15-19.

7.
Join the new and existing broad-based campaigns to fund human needs and cut the military budget. Join with organizations representing the fight against cutbacks (especially labor and community groups) to build coalitions at the city/town, state and national level. Draft resolutions for city councils, town and village meetings and voter referendum ballot questions linking astronomical war spending to denial of essential public services at home. (Model resolutions and ballot questions will be circulated for consideration of local groups.) Obtain endorsements of elected officials, town and city councils, state parties and legislatures, and labor bodies. Work the legislative process to make military spending an issue. Oppose specific military funding programs and bills, and couple them with human needs funding issues. Use lobbying and other forms of protest, including civil disobedience campaigns, to focus attention on the issue.

8.
Mid-March, 2011 nationally coordinated local teach-ins and protests to mark the eighth year of the Iraq War and to prepare for bi-coastal spring demonstrations the following month.

9.
Bi-Coastal mass spring mobilizations in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles on April 9, 2011. These will be accompanied by distinct and separate non-violent direct actions on the same day. A prime component of these mobilizations will be major efforts to include broad new forces from youth to veterans to trade unionists to civil and human rights groups to the Arab, Muslim and other oppressed communities, to environmental organizations, social justice and faith-based groups. Veterans and military families will be key to these mobilizations with special efforts to organize this community to be the lead contingent. Launch a full-scale campaign to get endorsements for these actions commencing with the final plenary session of this conference.

10.
Select a week prior to or after the April actions for local lobbying of elected officials at a time when Congress is not in session. Lobbying to take multiple forms from meeting with local officials to protests at their offices and homes. We will attend the town hall meetings of our Congresspersons and confront them vigorously on their support for the wars and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and sanctions on Iran. We also will press them on the unconstitutional diminution of the civil liberties of all Americans and targeted populations.

11.
Consistent with the call to include broad popular sectors of society in our efforts and to contend with the challenges of opposing U.S. wars and occupations while also rejecting attacks at home, National Peace Conference participants will join May Day actions on May 1, 2011, so as to unite all those standing against war and for rights. U.S. military and trade wars force millions of refugees and migrants to the U.S., where they face growing repression, including mass detentions and deportations. Many immigrants, including youth, are forced into the military, through the economic draft as well as under threat of deportation and using false promises of citizenship. By standing together as one on May Day, the antiwar and immigrant rights movements make clear their united stand against U.S. wars and for the rights of all at home and abroad.

12.
National tours: Organize, over a series of months, nationally-coordinated tours of prominent speakers and local activists that link the demands for immediate withdrawal to the demands for funding social programs, as outlined above. Encourage alternatives to military/lethal intervention, relying on research and experience of local and international peace team efforts.

13.
Pressure on Iran from the U.S., Israel and other quarters continues to rise and the threat of a catastrophic military attack on Iran, as well as the ratcheting up of punitive sanctions that primarily impact the people of that country, are of grave concern. In the event of an imminent U.S. government attack on Iran, or such an attack, or a U.S.-backed Israeli attack against Iran, or any other major international crisis triggered by U.S. military action, a continuations committee approved by the conference will mount rapid, broad and nationally coordinated protests by antiwar and social justice activists.

14.
In the event of U.S.-backed military action by Israel against Palestinians, aid activists attempting to end the blockade of Gaza, or attacks on other countries such as Lebanon, Syria, or Iran, a continuations committee approved by the conference will condemn such attacks and support widespread protest actions.

15.
In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!

16.
Support actions to end the Israeli occupation and repression of Palestinians and the blockade of Gaza.

17.
Support actions aimed at dismantling the Cold War nuclear, biological, radiological and chemical weapons and delivery systems. Support actions aimed at stopping the nuclear renaissance of this Administration, which has proposed to spend $80 billion over the next 10 years to build three new nuclear bomb making facilities and “well over” $100 billion over the same period to modernize nuclear weapons delivery systems. We must support actions aimed at dismantling nuclear, biological, radiological and chemical weapons and delivery systems. We must oppose the re-opening of the uranium mining industry, new nuclear power plants, and extraction of other fossil fuels that the military consumes.

18.
Work in solidarity with GIs, veterans, and military families to support their campaigns and calls for action. Demand support for the troops when they return home and support efforts to counter military recruitment.

19.
Take actions against war profiteers, including oil and energy companies, weapons manufacturers, and engineering firms, whose contractors are working to insure U.S. economic control of Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s resources.

20.
Support actions, educational efforts and lobbying campaigns to promote a transition to a sustainable peace economy.

21.
Develop and implement a multi-pronged national media campaign which includes the following: the honing of a message which will capture our message: “End the Wars and Occupations, Bring the Dollars Home;” a fundraising campaign which would enable the creation and national placement and broadcast of professionally developed print ads as public service radio and television spots which communicate this imperative to the public as a whole (which would involve coordinated outreach to some major funders); outreach to sympathetic media artists to enable the creation of these pieces; an intentional, aggressive, coordinated campaign to garner interviews on as many targeted national news venues as possible which would feature movement voices speaking our nationally coordinated message to the honed; a plan to place on message op-ed pieces in papers around the country on a nationally coordinated schedule.

22.
We demand the immediate and total withdrawal of U.S. military forces, mercenaries and contractors from Afghanistan and Iraq, and an end to drone attacks on Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries and call for self-determination for the people of all countries. In this demand is the necessity for full truth and transparency regarding all U.S./NATO actions and an expanded development of independent news sources for broad public knowledge of the state of the wars and occupations. We demand an end to censorship of news topics and full democratic access to freedom of information within the U.S. NATO Military Industrial Media Empire.

23.
We call for the equal participation of women in all aspects of the antiwar movement. We propose nonviolent direct actions either in Congressional offices or other appropriate and strategic locations, possibly defense contractors, Federal Buildings, or military bases in the U.S. These actions would be local and coordinated nationally, i.e., the same day for everyone (times may vary). The actions would probably result in arrests for sitting in after offices close. Entering certain facilities could also result in arrests. Participants would be prepared for that possible outcome before joining the action. Nonviolence training would be offered locally, with lists of trainers being made available. The message/demand would be a vote, a congressional action to end the wars: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan. Close U.S. bases. Costs of war and financial issues related to social needs neglected because of war spending would need to be studied and statements regarding same be prepared before the actions. Press release would encourage coverage because of the actions being local and nationally coordinated.

24.
We will convene one or more committees or conferences for the purpose of identifying and arranging boycotts, sit-ins, and other actions that directly interfere with the immoral aspects of the violence and wars that we protest.

25.
We call for the immediate release from Israeli prisons of Mordechai Vanunu and for ending restrictions on his right to speak. We also call upon the Israeli government to let him travel freely and to leave Israel permanently if he so desires.

26.
We oppose the prosecution for Bradley Manning for being the source of the Wikileaks leaks. Manning has done what all GIs should do when they see war crimes: expose them! Bradley Manning’s prosecution sends a message that if you expose illegal activity in the military, you will be prosecuted. We call for the unconditional release of Bradley Manning and an end to all war crimes.

27.
We call for building and expanding the movement for peace by consciously and continually linking it with the urgent necessity to create jobs and fund social needs. We call for support from the antiwar movement to tie the wars and the funding for the wars to the urgent domestic issues through leaflets, signs, banners and active participation in the growing number of mass actions demanding jobs, health care, housing, education and immigrant rights such as:

July 25 – March in Albany in Support of Muslims Targeted by Preemptive Prosecution called by the Muslim Solidarity Committee and Project SALAM.

July 29 & 30 – Boycott Arizona Actions across the country as racist Arizona law SB 1070 goes into effect, including the mass march July 30 in NYC as the Arizona Diamondbacks play the Mets.

All the other mass actions listed above leading up to the bi-coastal actions on April 9, 2011.

28.
The continuations committee elected at this conference shall reach out to other peace and social justice groups holding protests in the fall of 2010 and the spring of 2011, where such groups’ demands and tactics are not inconsistent with those adopted at the UNAC conference, on behalf of exploring ways to maximize unity within the peace and social justice movements this fall and next spring.

PPLFF says no BDS of Israeli Apartheid

PPLFF says no BDS of Israeli Apartheid

Crap. The Anti-Apartheid BDS campaign targeted Cannes because of it, Hollywood luminaries boycotted the Toronto Film Festival over the same principles in 2009, you’d think the Springs gay community might have paid heed. Instead the 2010 Pikes Peak Lavender Film Festival opted to screen the Israeli melodrama Eyes Wide Open, Zionists’ illegal appropriation of Jerusalem be damned. When Canadian gays made international news for allowing Queers Against Israeli Apartheid to march in their pride parade, in spite of Jewish philanthropists pressuring the City of Toronto to withdraw funding, I hoped that COS pride festivities might opt to climb aboard. Instead this weekend Colorado Springs gets a full-on endorsement of Israel’s ongoing illegal invasion of Palestine.

It was a false hope. The Pikes Peak area gay community has found itself so embattled since Amendment Two’s 1992 measure to legalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, that common social causes are easily crowded out by Gay Marriage, DADT and brand recognition for LGBT. So much so that social justice activists can only participate in the pride parade on the condition that it be about solidarity, not antiwar. With gay issues being so politicized, should gays and lesbians get a pass on staying apolitical about war or racism? Whatever excuses we make, it’s a perfectly flamboyant example of silence equals consent. I count apolitical queens every bit as complicit with US military criminality as the above-it-all new-agers and NASCAR jackasses.

Set in an Orthodox neighborhood of Jerusalem, Eyes Wide Open doesn’t address the Israeli-Palestinian troubles, it ignores them, effectively normalizing an ethnically-cleansed Palestine. The film tells the story of an extramarital gay affair between Jewish scholars, blablabla, minus the evictions of Palestinians in the path of encroachment by Israeli settlers, and the hijacking of Muslim holy sites . “Beverly Hills 90210” was fine without scenes of the LAPD repression of Watts or East LA, but 90210 wasn’t pretending to be taped on non-Jewish land.

Eyes Wide Open was the title of the 2005 American Friends Service Committee antiwar boot-counting exercise to open American eyes to the enormity of casualties of the Iraq War — before the Eyes Wide Open slogan was adopted by a 2008 Israeli PR project to encourage American Jews to pay more attention to their birthright offer of Israeli citizenship. The death count of US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan (now that the AFSC has been cleared to consider both wars illegal) has long since outgrown the AFSC budget for buying boots or lugging them around in rented trucks, and now EWO (Einaym Pkuhot) is a miserable tale about infidelity and sin.

Frankly, Trembling Before G-d was an incredible documentary about gay Orthodox men struggling with the DADT policy of Orthodox Judaism. I remember seeing it at the 2003 PPLFF, or so. I remember Rabbinical experts expounded on both sides of the argument with authority and humor. But that was before the BDS movement to curb Israel’s racist apartheid system. You either support the picket or you scab.

Objective reviews of EWO are scarce in the Zionist-dominated press, and increasing numbers are honoring the cultural and academic boycott of Israeli Apartheid. Refusing to see EWO is by no means concluding it is bad. For all I know the film may be using the ostracism of homosexuals within the Orthodox community to represent the growing alienation Israelis are feeling in the face of the open revulsion expressing itself by the rest of the world. Maybe it’s brilliant.

But I’m not deliberating about whether to see it. BDS means no to Israel, to its statesmen, artists, scholars and products. And the American companies which support Israel’s policy of Apartheid, several dozen, and now that includes our own PPLFF.